Star Control: WEEK TWO news!

Star Control: WEEK TWO news!

Wow! What a fantastic week! Like many of you, we weren't sure what the reception would be. How many people are into space adventure/RPG games? I've even seen debates on what exactly is an RPG?

Here's what we have planned for this week:

Translation (Перевод)

Russia is the #2 market for this game. With German a close #3. The translations came in a lot hotter than we expected due to the star and planet names.

We are hoping very much to have a package from Moscow waiting in our inbox with the final translations so that we can get those up. We will also be updating the other languages as people find issues. Humor...is not always easy to translate.

Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese are also supposed to get in but they might slip to the v1.01 update to get more QA time. Finnish and Norwegian are also currently in QA.

Stability

Overall stability is looking pretty good. But we have definitely encountered a few really baffling things and we know some of you are into this sort of thing like we are so we'll keep you up to date on the detective work. But here are the biggies:

1. Some people have reported not being able to load and save games. That's obviously a huge issue. But it dies immediately upon trying to open that dialog.

2. Crash on start up. This is, so far, 95% because people have altered their page file size to be smaller or fixed. Don't do that (I used to do it too). Windows 10 commits memory based on your core size if the game loads assets via that core. So yes, no matter what, if you play long enough even though the game might only be using 2G, it will commit 16Gigs. It's not leaking, the OS is caching it. So you an imagine what happens if you have a fixed page file.

3. Random locks/pauses. So far, this is largely due to CPU or GPU throttling (mainly GPU throttling). Your NVIDIA or AMD GPU can get very hot playing this game because the engine will use multiple CPU cores to send data to your GPU. You might need to make your GPU fans more aggressive.

For the update, we're going to put a tiny throttle to prevent this issue (don't worry it won't slow things down).

2. Some of the alien meeting achievements aren't working right depending on timing. Fixed.

3. The game will let you know that you don't need to land on every crummy planet if you're landing on a bunch of crummy planets. #1 negative review source has been people landing on thousands of planets and thinking that's the way to make money. SC doesn't have a sand based (silicon) based economy.

4. Improved AI for the fleet controller module.

5. Updated UI for turning on and off the fleet controller module during battle.

6. Mappable E for interact.

7. Talk to MS (again) about whitelisting Star Control from Windows Defender so that it quits scanning all our files (for those experiencing load time pain).

8. Auto-Pilot will warn player that their destination is beyond their fuel range.

9. Typos. (removing them, not adding them).

10. Option to remove movie subtitles.

More to come!

Thank you everyone for your support! And as always, we would appreciate it a lot if you would review the game on Steam (good, bad, ugly). We read all the reviews and your posts.

3. The game will let you know that you don't need to land on every crummy planet if you're landing on a bunch of crummy planets. #1 negative review source has been people landing on thousands of planets and thinking that's the way to make money. SC doesn't have a sand based (silicon) based economy.

I think it would be great if new players actually had an idea of what kind of value each mineral type has. SC2 veterans already know the mineral color coding by heart, but newbies don't, and the Codex says nothing about it.

The game will let you know that you don't need to land on every crummy planet if you're landing on a bunch of crummy planets. #1 negative review source has been people landing on thousands of planets and thinking that's the way to make money. SC doesn't have a sand based (silicon) based economy.

I gotta disagree; most of the reason my ship is as badass as I've made it is being able to afford the mods and specials I wanted, and I'd never have bought them if I hadn't gone digging for the really valuable resources.

And sometimes it's the only way to build up a fleet without going broke: either you need to afford more ships or you need to find them.

I mean, okay, yeah, there are some planets that are totally skippable cuz the resources aren't even slightly valuable, but even so...

The real problem is that some of the really valuable stuff is gonna be needed later...and we have no way to know it. And I encountered one quest that needed lead...and it took me six bloody hours to track down the lead I needed.

Six. Bloody. Hours.

Prospecting, trawling for dough, has been a big part of the game for me for multiple reasons.

Option to remove movie subtitles.

THANK YOU!

Been wanting that since playing the Chapter One beta.

I'd really like a way to buy back quest items--like hyperdrives (**hinthint**)--if we've sold them without realizing they were important.

3. The game will let you know that you don't need to land on every crummy planet if you're landing on a bunch of crummy planets. #1 negative review source has been people landing on thousands of planets and thinking that's the way to make money. SC doesn't have a sand based (silicon) based economy.

I think it would be great if new players actually had an idea of what kind of value each mineral type has. SC2 veterans already know the mineral color coding by heart, but newbies don't, and the Codex says nothing about it.

If you place your mouse over a mineral during planet scan it tells you its value.

7. Talk to MS (again) about whitelisting Star Control from Windows Defender so that it quits scanning all our files (for those experiencing load time pain).

So, if I exclude Star Control Origins folder from Microsoft Defender I should get faster loading times?https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028485/windows-10-add-an-exclusion-to-windows-defender-antivirus

My long loading time is caused by Steam putting up the "Preparing first time installation" window and taking several minutes to get through that before it even starts loading the game. Is it doing this for everyone or just me? Everytime I start SCO Steam things it was just installed and spends minutes doing... something... before it even starts loading the game.

7. Talk to MS (again) about whitelisting Star Control from Windows Defender so that it quits scanning all our files (for those experiencing load time pain).

So, if I exclude Star Control Origins folder from Microsoft Defender I should get faster loading times?https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028485/windows-10-add-an-exclusion-to-windows-defender-antivirus

Just wanted to reiterate, what i posted on Friday in the other thread, in case it got overlooked, please look into overall performance of the game. I for one did not run into any crashes or lock-downs, but the game could reaaally get some performance optimization, cause it drops framerate under 30 FPS a lot... mostly during planetary explorations, but even at those "conversation" screens with other aliens.

I have one last idea. I know you were in the beta. Is it possible that the directory chosen in SteamApps is actually the beta directory? The screenshot doesn't make it clear. If it's not the beta, then I'm out of ideas.

3. The game will let you know that you don't need to land on every crummy planet if you're landing on a bunch of crummy planets. #1 negative review source has been people landing on thousands of planets and thinking that's the way to make money. SC doesn't have a sand based (silicon) based economy.

Suggestion - make a flagship Sensor module that gives you a summary of what is in the solar system. First indication if you want to hang around.

Currently the game sucks at many levels. I kinda warned you guys about the dangers of a game without a really big open full game beta. The first hours I was excited about a new star control game but the initial momentum of the excitement got me thru the continue playing for sometime. The first time i launced the game the rating in steam was around %90ish. Yesterday it was 75 and now it is 73 and it will continue to drop. As people play the game they understand the game in really unfinished. Hence people put bad reviews. I love star control games and i love most of your games and nearly have all of them on steam but seeing this unfinished game being released made me really sad.

The interface is really really bad. You can click the journal and it autopilots to the world but the when you click on the objective that tells you to go to a homeplanet it doesnt auto pilot you. Info on values of weapons are not show anywhere at all (damage, range, rate of fire, energy consumption etc.). When you autopilot somewhere there should be an indicator that shows where you are going on autopilot. And also really annoyingly whenever i set autopilot to somewhere as soon as i enter the menu to check something else, the autopilot drops and i have to set it again. And Outfit part of the the shipyard menu is not user friendly. You should be able to drag modules to other slots that are compatible with the module. Objective menu, and captain's log should have a search feature that filters words. Sector maps should be able to be used to find races home star systems that you have discovered. Also there should be quest markers on the map to show you where the quests are.

Also as for gameplay, there should be a storage facility in the Sol that you can put stuff you dont want to sell at the moment and dont want to carry around with your ship.

Storyline is ok but far from grasping.

Planet exploration is goodish but i have been to hunderds of planets the aliens on the planet are just 3-4 type. Nothing else.